Things you always wanted to know the answer to [Vol. 2]

[DervVW]

Blib said:

Funkycoldribena said:

How much would it cost in AA batteries to run an average house for a day/year instead of electric?

Pound shop batteries or Duracel?

I wanna know now!

[s p a c e m a n]

This is bit of a local question...

Crossways business park in Dartford, there used to be a massive crossways sign in the same sort of style as the Hollywood one that you could see whilst driving down the QE11 bridge, where did it go?

[iva cosworth]

Probably made way for another building to go up or they built one so it's no longer visible.

That's planners for you.

[tumble dryer]

Ayahuasca said:

I have touched many toaster wires with forks etc and nothing happens except the wire cools down at the point you touch it.

That you have touched many is ...worrying.


For the life of me I can’t think of any electrical appliance that I give more respect to.

Mediaeval fkers!

That and ‘bar’ fires.

TD


TD

[glazbagun]

DervVW said:

Blib said:

Funkycoldribena said:

How much would it cost in AA batteries to run an average house for a day/year instead of electric?

Pound shop batteries or Duracel?

I wanna know now!

Very non scientific google found some guy who said:

SomeGuyOnTheInternet said:

The average UK electricity consumption for houses with gas for heating is 3,300 kWh(units) a year. Approx 9 units a day.

9KW/H in a day.

According to This other guy on the internet

The best AA (Duracel Ultra) has ~2.2W/H

9000/2.2= ~4090 AA batteries


Feel free to check my maths. I'm eight pints up and ready to crash for the night.

[FiF]

singlecoil said:

Dr Jekyll said:

scarble said:

.. because people spill beer on the tables?

Well yes, but is it that beer is impossible to clean off, or that most pubs don't bother? Or is it the cleaning stuff that makes tables sticky? My favourite pub currently has non sticky tables, any chance it will stay that way?

One possibility is that whoever is going around wiping the tables is using a cloth that is insufficiently wet, and/or not rinsing it often enough, with the result that they are wiping the tables with slightly diluted beer. Laziness, basically.

Would tend to agree with singlecoil's suggestion with the caveat that you sometimes get this in cafés who don't sell beer.

It's laziness for sure, quick spray with some sort of goodness knows what fluid and then a wipe with a cloth that has probably been recycled after cleaning up a bottom eruption in trap 2.

Probably the seat in trap 2 could be cleaner than the table.

[mybrainhurts]

Farmer up the road has hundreds of white geese in a field.

Why don't they fly away?

[ATTAK Z]

mybrainhurts said:

Farmer up the road has hundreds of white geese in a field.

Why don't they fly away?

Cos they're hungry

[mybrainhurts]

I'm not buying that...

[scarble]

torqueofthedevil said:

Does food last longer when cooked?
I have a huge slab of salmon. It's best before date is today.
If I cook it all today will it still be ok tomorrow / day after?
Generally food seems less inclined to go off when it's cooked

Today I cooked and ate some salmon that was 3 days out of date.
Will keep you informed. I do this for science!
Wish me luck.

p.s. pub tables -> maybe they just can't wipe as fast as people spill (or maybe s**t pub)
toasters -> I'm more worried by showers, the poxy seal, the way the apes that install them crack the casing when they over tighten the screws and the number of times my life has been saved by an RCD (only to die from out of date salmon?)

[226bhp]

Why do coins have dates on them?

Why do bank notes not have dates on them?

[scdan4]

FiF said:

singlecoil said:

Dr Jekyll said:

scarble said:

.. because people spill beer on the tables?

Well yes, but is it that beer is impossible to clean off, or that most pubs don't bother? Or is it the cleaning stuff that makes tables sticky? My favourite pub currently has non sticky tables, any chance it will stay that way?

One possibility is that whoever is going around wiping the tables is using a cloth that is insufficiently wet, and/or not rinsing it often enough, with the result that they are wiping the tables with slightly diluted beer. Laziness, basically.

Would tend to agree with singlecoil's suggestion with the caveat that you sometimes get this in cafés who don't sell beer.

It's laziness for sure, quick spray with some sort of goodness knows what fluid and then a wipe with a cloth that has probably been recycled after cleaning up a bottom eruption in trap 2.

Probably the seat in trap 2 could be cleaner than the table.

It might depend on the woodstain / varnish and cleaner used. We had a load of well cleaned tables all turn sticky over about a week - we'd changed the sanitiser we used to clean them with. I had to strip and revarnish them all (twice - as the initial revarnish did exactly the same thing. Ended up using toolstation brand cheap yacht varnish. That has now lasted well)

Admittedly in some establishments it will be grot - but if it looks otherwise clean, that is what my money would be on.

[tickious]

If you use two estate agents to sell your house, who gets the commission? Both?

[iva cosworth]

I'm no expert but surely only 1 agent actually sells the house and the other misses out and gets nowt ?

[ChemicalChaos]

What is the fake coal in gas fireplaces made of? It seems to have no mass whatsoever

[DervVW]

tickious said:

If you use two estate agents to sell your house, who gets the commission? Both?

When we sold ours we had to agree in the terms and conditions that only they would represent us...

But I do see houses with two boards up, so there must be an expirey on that. Perhaps its the one that gets the sale, you know the one who deals with the new buyer.

[Fun Bus]

iva cosworth said:

I'm no expert but surely only 1 agent actually sells the house and the other misses out and gets nowt ?

The agent who sells does get the comission but I think multi-agency selling can attract a much higher fee. All agents involved have to agree to the multi-agency arrangement too,

[K50 DEL]

Fun Bus said:

iva cosworth said:

I'm no expert but surely only 1 agent actually sells the house and the other misses out and gets nowt ?

The agent who sells does get the comission but I think multi-agency selling can attract a much higher fee. All agents involved have to agree to the multi-agency arrangement too,

Yep... the last place I sold I was offered sole agency at 1.25% or dual agency at 2.5%

[Tyre Tread]

K50 DEL said:

Fun Bus said:

iva cosworth said:

I'm no expert but surely only 1 agent actually sells the house and the other misses out and gets nowt ?

The agent who sells does get the comission but I think multi-agency selling can attract a much higher fee. All agents involved have to agree to the multi-agency arrangement too,

Yep... the last place I sold I was offered sole agency at 1.25% or dual agency at 2.5%

I work in a related industry that iuses similar contracts and am in the process of talking to Agents.

The percentages they quote and terms are all highly negotiable particularly if there are a high volume of agents in your area.

Who gets the commission depends upon the terms of the contract and when the property is sold.

Usually an agent will want sole selling rights for the initail period of the marketing (you are not obliged to give it). This means that contractually you cannot sign up with another agent. However the terms usually contain a provision that if you sell to anyone, whether or not introduced by that agent, during the sole selling right period, you are liable to pay them their fees. If another instructed agent found the buyer you COULD end up paying two lots of fees.

I had an interesting discussion with an agent on Friday who tried explaining dual and multi agnecy agreements to me (having failed to askertain my level of knowledge on the subject). He was a Director of a large estate agency and he hadn't a clue and tried to BS me. Guess who i'm not going with?

ETA: Usually if there are 2 boards up then the initial sole agency period has expired and the vendor has instructed a second (sometimes third etc) agent and the agent who introduces the buyer gets the commission. There is a well known case,Dashwood (formerly Kaye) v Fleurets Ltd [2007] EWHC 1610 QB: An estate agent who introduced a buyer to a seller was entitled to commission, despite the buyer concluding the sale with another agent.

The High Court considered the wording of the agency agreement between the seller and the agent, the facts of the case and whether the agent needed to show it was the "effective cause" of the sale.

The case provides a useful summary of the case law on the principles governing estate agency and commissions, and has interesting implications for both estate agents and their seller clients.

Edited by Tyre Tread on Monday 27th October 09:38

[P-Jay]

Dr Jekyll said:

Why do so many pubs have sticky tables? (Apart from the fact that I'm obviously going to the wrong pubs).

Simply put they're crap at cleaning, it's inevitable that customer will spill a few drops of their drinks - lemonade / coke the sugary stuff is worse for stickiness of course.

Pubs are going out of business at a rate of knots but even back in the 90's when I was a Barman we never had a cleaner on during business hours, you basically had to wait for a lull in action at the bar to venture out into no-man's-land to pick up empties, empty ashtrys and whatnot - to clean a table properly you'd need to spend far more time than you had - nowadays they probably don't bother with in-house cleaners at all, but sub it out - they're usually pretty terrible because they're given tiny slots of time to do their work